Tag: #blacklivesmatter

I didn’t march yesterday. Our government shut down and I stayed home in my pajamas merely contemplating the state of the world rather than taking to the streets.

There wasn’t actually a march in my area this year. There may have been one last year but I lived elsewhere then. I wasn’t even in that place last year. I was in California studying at San Francisco Theological Seminary toward my certificate in spiritual direction. I was near a march but I decided not to go mostly because I would have been going alone. I didn’t know others that were going. Though I knew strangers would have become friends in the midst of the protest, the logistics of it overwhelmed me and instead I went to the beach and prayed.

Yesterday I could have attended an Impeachment Rally or I could have joined in the Handmaids Procession to demonstrate my conviction that Roe v. Wade should be upheld, but instead I was home.

Instead, I put another load of cloth diapers in the washer, breastfed my tiny human even after she’d stopped feeding 30 minutes ago (it seems she’s in a growth spurt) and contemplated whether or not yesterday would be a day I would shower. Or not. (It was not such a day as it turns out.)

There was once a time where I saw myself as an activist. There is still part of me that wishes that I could be a better activist. I’ve wished that I could have been the kind of pastor that was incremental in transformative change by showing up in picket lines, singing from loud speakers and locking myself in congresswomen’s offices but I found that I didn’t do these things often. Not because opportunity didn’t present itself. It did, but I found myself making other choices. I found that the heart of my ministry wasn’t on the front lines of justice but it was in the messiness of loving people. I chose the bedside over the march almost every time so maybe it’s not surprising that I’m not marching today. Maybe it shouldn’t be a big deal and yet I have to wonder what I will tell my daughter.

When she learns about the inauguration of the 45th president, will she ask me if I joined in the marches in every city? Will she scan my tweets from ten or fifteen or twenty years ago looking for whether or not I added my voice to #metoo or #blacklivesmatter? Will she then challenge me to why I didn’t do more?

That’s what gives me pause because I could do more. I should do more. I want do to more even in this season where I choose a different kind of bedside. This is what I’m not sure I’ll be able to explain to my daughter in ten or fifteen or twenty years because I’m not quite sure I can explain it to myself.

It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to march alone last year, but that I was ambivalent about the founding of this particular protest. I was then and remain today concerned that we don’t know how to talk about the value of one person without talking about the value of all people. We can’t just talk about women and their created worth without confessing the sins that women can and do commit against each other. I’ve made my own excuses about this, and I’m trying hard to do better. So I didn’t feel totally comfortable aligning myself with a group of white women when I knew there were lives that were going to be more horrifically impacted by this particular administration.

How will I explain this to my daughter? Will I tell her that each time I fed her at my breast, I scrolled through the headlines on my phone to see one more deportation? How will I explain to her how it felt to see that another black child shot? Will I even remember their names when she asks me why I didn’t march?

How will I explain my resistance when it feels like every bit of radical feminism I once had has been overcome by piles of laundry and petty arguments with my husband about who will do the dishes in the sink? I hope that I don’t remember this absurdity in ten or fifteen or twenty years.

I hope I remember instead that I did use my words. I didn’t have a pulpit when she was very small. I wasn’t leading the chants as I once did. No one handed me a loud speaker, but I chose this particular bedside by her crib. I read her stories. I sang with her. I gave her the tools that she would need to persist. It’s what I did as a pastor too. It’s what my ministry turned out to be I wasn’t always on the front lines, but I did everything I could to help others be there. I’d read those names in worship. We’d confess our sins. We’d recommit to doing better.

I may not be on the front lines of this fight but I still believe we can do better. I know we can. I’m raising a little girl in the certainty of this faith. It’s not the path that I thought I’d take. I’m not the activist I once believed I could be, but I will raise her in the resistance. I will raise her to fight the good fight.

I sat in the pews to worship. But, before worship even began, there was a wave of sadness that fell over that gathering of God’s people.

There were words of thanks offered, gratitude for the hospitality that had been offered earlier in the week in the midst of two funerals. The names of the deceased were mentioned but they were not names that I knew. As a first time visitor in worship, I could only feel the sadness that was left after these two saints have died.

It’s not just something that is felt in this one church I found myself on Sunday morning but something all too familiar. We are not sure what the future of the church might look like. We are trying to imagine it and prepare for it but our saints are dying. The people that gave their hearts and souls to the work of the gospel, the very people we all hope we’ll one day be like and the people that made the church what it is today are dying. We’re going to their funerals. We’re saying prayers over their bodies and what remains is this overwhelming sadness because it’s not just that one life, but the many. So many of our saints are dying. It seems to be happening all at once. Maybe it is always this way. Maybe it feels like this for every generation and it is just the way of things that we wonder how we might match their goodness. It may be normal to look around the sanctuary and wonder who will be the next Lee or the next Janet or who will always be there with a joke like Gordon always was. Maybe it never feels like there are enough new people wandering in through those doors and we never quite feel like we could be the ones to follow in the footsteps of those saints. We are instead always looking for someone else.

I don’t know but it sure feels to me like we are burying some amazing people. It feels like there is so much death of so many great people. So much so that I had to unsubscribe from my former church’s weekly email because the prayer list was just too much to bear. It’s that familiar feeling that I felt as worship began on Sunday. It hovered over us through the entire time we attempted to lift our praise. If this is something we are all feeling, in churches all over the place, how do we honor that sense of loss? How do we make a space for it? What might be different about this All Saints Day?

It is no secret that this is one of my favorite observances in the church year. There are lots of wonderful moments of worship that use candles and ribbons and bells to remind us of these beloved people. There was a time when those bells were ringing to remind the living of the dead. It is not lack of memory that plagues us but how we might make sense of so much death in our time. Count those in your own congregation who have died. List the names of those that died in combat in a war most of our country doesn’t believe we are fighting or list every name that has died just this year because we refuse to believe that black lives matter. There are so many names that we could say. This year, let’s actually say the names.

I don’t have a full liturgy to offer you this week but two ideas to inspire your worship planning.

Say their names. It is a hashtag that is trending on Twitter. As violence and brutality increase, there is a cry that is being heard on social media to #saytheirnames. There is power in naming. We know this as we name and pray for people each time we worship. They stay on our prayer lists for a week or two until they disappear from our memories. We are too distracted or perhaps we’re just too upset to stick with the pain for too long. For All Saints Day, meet with the deacons or the worship committee and together make a list of names to be read during worship. You might go back over the prayer list and remember every saint who has died or other names that really need to be said. There has been a lot of death in the past year. Do not shy away from a long list. Decide how the names will be read and who will read which names. You might choose to ring a bell after the reading of each name, as is the ancient practice, or you might choose a piece of music to play softly under the reading of the names.

Write letters to the saints. I know that there are assigned readings for this particular feast day that don’t actually coincide with Proper 26 or Proper 27, but I really like the opening words to the church in Thessalonika from Proper 26. It reminds me of the letters I often write to my mom so that I wonder what would happen if we gave space for our church people to write to the saints of the church. Imagine that salutations and thanksgivings they would write to those they had admired and then what would be said next? What would they want to say about their church or their own discipleship to this saint now? It could be good sermon fodder but I’d want to find a way to have everyone write letters perhaps in place of the Prayers of the People. Maybe we’d find some way to send them. Fire? Big post box on cotton balls? I’m not sure… What do you think?

These are just ingredients that need a little more time in the kitchen. Good liturgy is the work of the people and every idea needs to have a little time to cook within a community. I would love to hear what might happen with these half-baked ideas within your church family. Please let me know and maybe I’ll even see you for more Ingredients for Worship next Tuesday!

I have failed the past few weeks. Did you notice? There were no new ingredients for worship the past two weeks. Or was it three? I’m not sure I have an excuse. I could give you one but I’m not sure that any explanation will make a difference.

Today I am in the middle of driving across the country to the middle of America so it may seem weird that I’ve decided to post something. But, there is so much that feels broken. There is so much hate speech and so much anger. I don’t feel like my words can respond to any of it but I want to try. I want to do something to speak that love is greater than hate. Or Trump. Take your pick.

Tuesday October 11 is National Coming Out Day. It is a day to embrace who we are without hiding. It’s a day to celebrate who God created us to be, except it’s not a day for me. I may be an ally but I also come from a tradition where we love n inclusivity so much that we don’t ever want to leave anyone out. As the Black Lives Movement continues to teach us, the generalizations are killing people. So let’s get specific. Let’s talk about the particular challenges of being gay even after marriage equality has become the law of the land. Let’s celebrate that it’s still a brave act to come out and let us be so bold as to give a space for those that need to hear that they are fearfully and wonderfully made by our God.

There are some wonderful prayer resources out there to celebrate this particular day within the context of worship. There is this whole liturgy from the United Church of Christ. It will, however, take you off lectionary but the prayers could surely be tweaked. in years past, I have loved this prayer from Coming Out Young and Faithful. I offer it to you giving full credit to the authors.

Prayer for Coming Out

Creator God,
I am learning things all the time.
It is a gift to be young and to get to know you
and our world, your beautiful creation.
I am getting to know myself, and I’m discovering that sometimes I am
attracted to members of my gender – other girls (or boys).
Sometimes the things I feel are strong and deep.
Sometimes it even feels like love.
Sometimes I feel scared of these feelings.
Sometimes I feel wonderful about them.
I know that I am your creation,
and you have given me a wonderful gift in my orientation.
I pray for your supporting presence
as I become more comfortable with my feelings.
I pray for your guidance,
That I may know when it is the right time for me
to let other people know about this part of me.
I pray for your supporting presence
if I should be rejected, knowing that you,
God who created me,
will not reject me,
that you will affirm me
as part of your beautiful creation.
In you I trust.
Amen.

Check back for more Ingredients for Worship next Tuesday (God willing) and don’t forget to share what you’ve cooked up in the comments below! I’d love to heard how you’re celebrating this day.

I have not yet sat down to write my sermon on this Gospel Lesson but when I sat down to write this liturgy I was still thinking about that prayer that Jesus taught last week. I’m still thinking about the words that we choose and how they impact our relationships and our hopes. Because words matter. Words always matter.

Words like those in Ecclesiastes. I basically just wanted to read this as a confession because it feels so dang honest. Things aren’t going as they should. New people are coming along and mucking up everything that I started. They don’t understand. They are doing it wrong. That sounds like church to me. It sounds like the generational conflict that is playing out even outside the church as we continue to blame millennials for… well, everything. It even has a hint of this tension I keep seeing appear between the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. might have done in the Civil Rights Movement to what is happening now in the Black Lives Matter Movement. All is vanity! Wiser words were never said which is why I want to focus a bit more not the words of the Psalm because verse 3 seems to say it all.

I want those words to speak to my soul. I don’t yet know if this will become the focus of my sermon but I’m fascinated about how the rich man in this parable speaks to his soul. I’m not sure what I’d say to my soul. I’m not sure if I’d have anything to say but I would like some time to think about that — and that’s what worship can be. Time to reflect upon God and self. (It can be a lot more than that but that’s not a bad place to start.) Here are a few ingredients for such soul pondering.

*Call to Worship (Responsive)

One: Our mouths shall speak wisdom; the

meditation of our hearts will be understanding.

All: We are listening for wise words.

One: Let our worship be more than pithy

statements but let every word and every note

speak to our souls.

All: Speak to our souls this day.

Prayer for Confession (Unison)

All is vanity. Wiser words were never said. We do so much to skimp and save. We try so hard to be good stewards at home, at work and at church but our hard work is never done. We have to entrust that work to others and so we can only wonder: will they be wise or will they be foolish? Teacher, speak to our souls We confess that we only trust ourselves. We do not trust those with who we share our work and sometimes, Teacher, we don’t even trust you. Forgive us and teach us to trust.

Affirmation of God’s Grace (Responsive)

One: Having confessed our sins, may our hearts now meditate on the grace that we do not deserve or understand. It speaks right to our souls to remember once again:

All: In Christ we are forgiven. Alleluia! Amen.

This is a new feature on my blog that I hope to become somewhat regular. I’m not making any promises. I’m going to try to make Tuesday the day. We shall see what happens. But, please do check back for more Ingredients for Worship next Tuesday and don’t forget to share what you’ve cooked up in the comments below!

With my coffee in hand, I spent this morning flipping through the pages of my Feasting on the Word commentary to study the Gospel Lesson for this Sunday only to discover that I’ve preached this one before. Of course I had. I couldn’t quite escape that feeling as I had started writing earlier this week but there wasn’t anything in my files. There was no manuscript to be found.

I finally did the math and realized that it was the summer of 2013 that this lection last appeared. This should have been obvious, but I was clearly under-caffeinated. Three years ago, I was pastoring the United Churches of Olympia. It was my first summer there, actually. And it was the summer that I had decided to preach without notes! A ha! I am, however, no good at getting up and speaking spontaneously. So there was definitely something written so I searched the archives of my blog and discovered this post.

I remember this vividly. I remember waking up that morning and reading the news. I remember the horror I felt so that I felt I had to scrap what I’d written earlier that week. I remember that I began that sermon from the aisle of the Sanctuary with a question. Or perhaps it was a statement. I inferred that every one gathered for worship that day knew what I knew. They had read the horror. They had seen the headlines and their outrage matched mine. But, they hadn’t yet seen it. They didn’t know that the verdict had been made the night before so that it took some time to get to the same place.

It’s something I often feel as a preacher. I feel the discord. I feel the tension as my heart and soul marches for justice through the words I proclaim. It’s not what they want to hear, those people in the pews. They want to hear good news. They want to be told it will all work out in the end. I want that too but it chills me to the bone to read these words again when in the last 24 hours the horror has hit again.

There are new names: Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. There are new names of beautiful hearts and souls that have been stripped and beaten and left for dead and it feels like words do not matter. But, they do. Words like these matter and if we can actually hear these words within the context of the Gospel then perhaps this parable matters too.

It matters to me.

It is not my words or even my interpretation of these words that matters but how we dare to answer the lawyer’s question. “Who is my neighbor?” he asks. There has never been a more important question. It is the question we must ask when we continue to label differences between us rather than insisting upon the humanity we share. We must ask this question again. We must continue to ask it until we — good white Christians — stop turning our backs on our black sisters and brothers.

Who is my neighbor? Three years ago, I concluded this:

The message is pretty simple (impossibly hard to do, but simple): if you want to feel God’s presence, if you really want to feel that kindness, you need to allow yourself to get uncomfortable. In the way this story goes, this sounds passive. You just wait for help to come along — and then when it finally comes from the last person on Earth you ever would have wanted, you receive it. I don’t want to sound too jaded, but you could be waiting a long time. What’s more: you’re not alone. There is someone else that is asking those exact same questions. There is someone else that feels as stripped and beaten as you do. Why are you waiting in a ditch by yourself? If you believe that change is possible, that we could live in a world where every neighbor might feel safe and protected, it seems to me that you can’t just wait around for someone else to inspire you. You gotta seek that out yourself. You gotta ask the questions that everyone is afraid to ask. That is how we will go and do likewise.

But, we haven’t. We haven’t gone and done likewise and so there has been a slow and steady loss of humanity because we haven’t made ourselves even a little bit uncomfortable. Now is the time. Get uncomfortable. Challenge your own arrogance and I’ll challenge mine.